


catching my death

by queersardonicrat



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, Implied Suicide Attempt, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, abuse mention, bc i love him! this all sounds grim and it is but its hopeful, i heard evermore and went oh ok jean, no character death!!, this is p much jean talking himself down on two occasions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:07:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queersardonicrat/pseuds/queersardonicrat
Summary: In December, two years in a row, Jean makes his way up to the roof of Evermore Castle. Somehow he makes it down again alive both times.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Jean Moreau, Neil Josten & Jean Moreau
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	catching my death

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a short inrospective jean drabble bc one of the new taylor swift songs made me think abt him, it's not my fault she fucking named it evermore.
> 
> trigger warning for suicidal ideation/considering comitting suicide, self harm, implied suicide attempt, and references to abuse. please let me know if i should add other trigger warnings!!
> 
> thanks to miriam (mmargent) for reading!

It’s too late, is what he told Kevin. It wasn’t true, but he’s done what he can. He's gotten his only friend out of hell but he’s still there. Because it’s his home. Has he made a home in hell, is hell the only home he’s ever had, or has he never known one? Jean doesn’t know, only knows it doesn’t matter.

In December, two years in a row, he makes his way up to the roof of Evermore Castle. There are perks of being a forever inhabitant of hell, of being perfect court and staying, and it takes the form of sometimes getting to polish your own gilded cage. That first December his room is so empty of Kevin and yet too filled with him. After the initial backlash, Riko realised it’s pointless to watch over him more than before. Jean is staying. If anything he has more privacy now than before. Along with more bruises against the pale skin of his arms.

  
Next December he notices that Nathaniel Wesninski avoids mirrors too. Of course, it’s hard not to.  
Notice.  
Avoid mirrors in a place like this.  
Jean's pretty sure Nathaniel avoids mirrors the rest of the time as well. Wonders if he will too if he gets out of here. Not that he will. Nathaniel might leave. Might even think he’ll manage to stay away. But he’s not Kevin. Nathaniel Wesninski is as much of a native of hell as he himself is, and sometimes the look in his eyes says he could make a home of it.

  
Jean makes his way up after dark. The room is too quiet without Kevin the first time and the second too loud with Nathaniel's presence. Before Kevin he wouldn’t have, but this is after, and he knows for certain now that it doesn’t matter either way.

It’s snowing. He'd never seen snow before he came here. That first winter it had seemed like a dream. That soft white blanket settling over the world just like in the childhood movies his sister liked. He'd woken up though. The winter after there was a rare case of snow in Marseilles, and in hell only ashes.

He walks to the edge. Physics isn’t his best subject, but there’s no way it isn’t high enough. He imagines it. Being splayed out on the snow covered asphalt. Pale black haired boy in blood. It sounds like a painting. Mirrors are not for him, but he wishes that if he jumps he gets to see it for a second. What he looks like. If his life’s work is beautiful. If it matters.

He imagines it, looks over the edge, and thinks about shoving his fingers down Kevin's throat in the bathroom and not telling anyone about it. Thinks about Kevin going to his father. Thinks about Kevin being the only family he can remember having, and thinks about never wanting to see him again. He looks down and all he feels is fear and this stubbornness that lives deep down in him that he hasn’t seen in a long time.  
He can’t help stepping away. Then  
nothing.  
Nothing left.

On the safe middle of the roof, he takes off his shoes, and his socks, and puts his bare feet down on the snow. Feels the structure of the cement under the skin. The biting cold eating greedily, setting him on fire, he closes his eyes and feels nothing but that till his feet are entirely numb. When there’s nothing at all left to feel, he goes back to his and Kevin's room. There’s a way to live in hell, he knows, and it’s to not feel the flames.

Nathaniel is a light sleeper and has to notice him leaving, but like other things it hardly matters.

That's what he tells himself when the roof is covered in snow but the sky is clear. Dark and vast, the way his chest feels open and endless, and the way it’s crushing his rib cage. The edge is an impossibility when you feel like this, he should know this, but when he steps closer and looks over, there’s only a desperate need. A desperate need to take another step and to be done with it. There’s absolutely no fucking way in hell. There’s no fucking way he gets out of this. So why does it feel like he just might? He wants to crush that feeling once and for all, he wants to be crushed, wants to be found with broken ribs and empty eyes. Wants to go back to nothingness.

Protecting Nathaniel had reminded him of Kevin at first. But now there’s Nathaniel's fire burning brighter than hellfire, feeding the part of him that doesn’t know how to entirely give up. There’s Nathaniel’s scars, and though he doesn’t look at them, Jean sees the proof of his survival every day. There's a girl with rainbow hair and insistent kindness. She’s probably stood here too. And there’s Kevin, somehow still alive and running. But mostly there’s Nathaniel who refuses to become a citizen of hell in spite of belonging. Nathaniel who’s probably never looked at a ledge and wanted to step off it.

Jean crouches down and plunges his hands down into the snow. Instead of keeping them there he packs some of it harshly into a snowball and flings it as hard as he can at one of the closest raven cars below. Doesn’t matter who owns it, but he kind of hopes it’s his own. Kind of hopes.  
His hands are still burning when he gives Neil a one word answer about where he was. Roof, he says. Neil nods, and they go to bed without sleeping.

Later, Neil says Andrew used to sit on the edge of the roof to feel something. Yeah, he says, I know.


End file.
